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Affinity Discrimination in B cells in Response to Membrane Antigen Requires Kinetic Proofreading

B cells signaling in response to antigen is proportional to antigen affinity, a process known as affinity discrimination. Recent research suggests that B cells can acquire antigen in membrane-bound form on the surface of antigen-presenting cells (APCs), with signaling being initiated within a few seconds of B cell/APC contact. During the earliest stages of B cell/APC contact, B cell receptors (BCRs) on protrusions of the B cell surface bind to antigen on the APC surface and form micro-clusters of 10-100 BCR/Antigen complexes. In this study, we use computational modeling to show that B cell affinity discrimination at the level of BCR-antigen micro-clusters requires a threshold antigen binding time, in a manner similar to kinetic proofreading. We find that if BCR molecules become signaling-capable immediately upon binding antigen, there is a loss in serial engagement due to the increase in bond lifetime as koff decreases. This results in decreasing signaling strength as affinity increases. A threshold time for antigen to stay bound to BCR before the latter becomes signaling-capable favors high affinity BCR-antigen bonds, as these long-lived bonds can better fulfill the threshold time requirement than low-affinity bonds. A threshold antigen binding time of ~10 seconds results in monotonically increasing signaling with affinity, replicating the affinity discrimination pattern observed in B cell activation experiments. This time matches well (within order of magnitude) with the experimentally observed time (~ 20 seconds) required for the BCR signaling domains to undergo antigen and lipid raft-mediated conformational changes that lead to association with Syk.